The Next Crisis for German Banks Isn’t Greece — It’s Shipping

FRANKFURT — For all the talk about Germany’s financial exposure to Greece, it turns out that some German banks have a problem of more titanic proportions — their vulnerability to the global shipping trade.

Germany’s 10 largest banks have €98 billion, or $128 billion, in outstanding credit or other risks related to the global shipping industry, according to Moody’s Investors Service. That is more than double the value of their holdings of government debt from Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. And it is more than any other country’s financial exposure to the shipping industry, which is in the fifth year of a recession.

Moreover, German banks bear a generous share of the blame for spawning that recession. By helping to finance and market funds used to build and purchase ships, a popular tax shelter, the banks helped create a glut in large container ships that has led to a collapse in cargo hauling prices worldwide.

Germans grumble chronically about having to pay for Greece’s bad debts, and German policy makers style themselves as guardians of fiscal prudence. But the shipping-related crisis, and the threat it poses to the German economy from billions of euros in bad loans and losses at shipping-related companies, is a reminder that German banks and political leaders also have plenty to answer for.

Shipping’s recession has been overshadowed by the euro zone debt crisis, but it has many of the same causes. They include complex financial products that turned sour, market-distorting government incentives and a gigantic underestimation of risk.

“The container ship market is completely overbuilt,” said Thomas Mattheis, a partner at TPW Todt, an accounting firm in Hamburg that advises clients in the industry. He blamed banks that granted easy credit, cargo companies that ordered too many vessels and investors eager for the tax-free profits that were part of the allure, thanks to German law.

“When you look back you can say they all had a share,” Mr. Mattheis said.

HSH Nordbank in Hamburg, the world’s largest provider of maritime finance, is expected to raise its estimate of potential losses from shipping on Wednesday when it reports quarterly earnings. The bank, owned by local governments and savings banks, has already warned that in coming years it will need to avail itself of €1.3 billion in guarantees offered by Hamburg and the state of Schleswig-Holstein, putting a further strain on taxpayers.

“I have to admit that grave mistakes were made in the years before 2009,” Constantin von Oesterreich, chief executive of HSH, said in an interview published by The Hamburger Abendblatt on Saturday. In October, Mr. von Oesterreich became the bank’s third new chief executive since 2008.

Other German banks that were particularly active in ship finance, including Commerzbank in Frankfurt and NordLB in Hanover, which both rank in the top five globally in that market, have said they have made adequate provisions for losses and will not need any government aid.

Commerzbank, which is partly owned by the German government after a bailout, shut down a unit specializing in ship financing this year and is winding down its holdings. The bank warned in its most recent quarterly report that it would be at least another year before it could sell units that were set up to finance construction of cargo ships with names including “Marseille” and “Palermo.” While larger, relatively new cargo ships sell for tens of millions of dollars, older, smaller ships often fetch only a few million — not much more than the value of the scrap metal.

Exposure to shipping is one reason Moody’s affirmed its negative outlook for German banks last month. In a report, the ratings agency warned that the global shipping industry “faces weakened demand amid sluggish global economic growth and evolving structural overcapacity.” It said money that the 10 largest German banks had lent to the shipping industry equaled 60 percent of their capital, the funds held in reserve for potential losses.

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Supreme Court keeps California in suspense on gay marriage

By Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times

December 3, 2012, 7:27 a.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not address the California gay-marriage case on Monday morning. The next time they can consider it is on Friday.

The case against Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in California, had been discussed by justices last Friday, but was not on the list of cases the court said it would review.

Many speculated that the court might have decided not to take the case, which would let an appeals court ruling on the matter stand. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found earlier this year that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, clearing the way for same-sex marriage in California unless the Supreme Court decides to get involved.

But the matter will remain in suspense for a while longer. The court could continue to discuss the case at conferences this year and early next year in advance of possibly hearing the case in June. They could also hold the matter over for the fall. 

Gay-marriage activists expressed disappointment that there was no news Monday.

"We understand that it is a complex case, and if they need another week to reach the right decision, we're fine with that," said Adam Umhoefer, executive director of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is fighting to overturn Proposition 8.

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Curiosity Rover Finds Simple Organics, But Long Path Remains to Determine Life

SAN FRANCISCO — In its first analysis of Martian soil, NASA’s Curiosity rover detected perchlorate salts and simple organic compounds but the probe’s science team can not yet determine if the carbon in these materials is indigenous to Mars.

“When we look in the soil we see a bunch of chemicals in there,” said geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, project scientist for the mission, during a NASA press conference here at the American Geophysical Union conference on Dec 3.

The rover’s instruments found water, sulfur, and chlorine-containing compounds, including chlorinated methane gas — a molecule that contains carbon. Curiosity detected these chemicals by scooping a small sample of Martian dust and heating it up slowly in a small-internal oven and then analyzing the resulting gases that get released. This was one of the first tests of the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, a microwave-sized machine that allows scientists to conduct experiments on Mars similar to ones they could if they had a sample of Mars soil in a laboratory on Earth. In addition to looking at gases, SAM used a laser spectrometer to determine the isotopes of different atoms in the sample, which could help understand the complicated history of water and other elements on Mars. Curiosity’s science team thinks that heating the soil sample caused the perchlorates to release chlorine, which readily bonds to other gases such as carbon dioxide, and could have produced the chlorinated methane. We know from previous missions such as Viking and the Phoenix lander that Martian soil contains perchlorate salts, harsh compounds that tend to destroy any organic molecules when heated. Mars’ atmosphere contains carbon dioxide but the team also said that the carbon may simply have been carried from Earth in small amounts since they weren’t able to scrub out every last trace of contamination beforehand.

Determining which of these scenarios is more likely will be the next step. Even if the carbon came from Mars, there will still be a long road to figuring out how it came to be in the soil. The most likely explanation is that it rained to the surface on meteorites and comets, which commonly contain many complex organic compounds. Even if the carbon molecules were created on Mars, it will take time to determine if they are traces of past life.

“Curiosity’s middle name is patience,” said Grotzinger. “And we all have to have a healthy dose of that.”

Prospects are that later results will provide more interesting results about life — the rover is roving around an ancient Martian riverbed, after all — and the scientists are quite pleased with their analysis. They now have good data on the chemistry of Martian dust presently found all over the planet. The fact that it contained no definitive organic compounds was not particularly surprising.

“This is very exposed material,” said Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator on the SAM instrument during the conference. “There are many processes that could destroy even the organic material that falls in from space: cosmic radiation, hydrogen peroxide, or ultra-high-dose radiation.” The team hopes to later use their analysis as a baseline to compare with other samples, taken from protected places deep underground or in billion-year-old rocks.

Referring to the rumors and excitement that preceded this announcement, Grotzinger said that he had been enthusiastic to see the rover’s instrument was working and beaming back great data. “We’re doing science at the speed of science,” he said, adding that a single experiment is unlikely to produce a “hallelujah moment” now or in the future.

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A bachelorette no more: Ashley Herbert weds beau

NEW YORK (AP) — Ashley Hebert (AY’-behr) is no longer a “Bachelorette.”

The 28-year-old Maine native got hitched over the weekend in Pasadena, Calif., to 35-year-old J.P. Rosenbaum of Long Island, who proposed to her on the seventh season of the ABC dating reality show “The Bachelorette.” Hebert tweeted that “12/1/12 goes down in history as the best day of my life!!”

Natalia Desrosiers, spokeswoman for Warner Bros. Television, which produces the show, said the wedding will be aired on Dec. 16 on ABC.

Hebert, who also competed on the 15th season of “The Bachelor,” grew up in Madawaska, Maine, and is a dentist. The couple now resides in the New York City area.

Only one other couple that met on the TV show has married. Bachelorette Trista Rehn married Vail, Colo., firefighter Ryan Sutter in 2003.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Quest to Eliminate Diagnostic Lapses

SAN FRANCISCO — The man on stage had his audience of 600 mesmerized. Over the course of 45 minutes, the tension grew. Finally, the moment of truth arrived, and the room was silent with anticipation.

At last he spoke. “Lymphoma with secondary hemophagocytic syndrome,” he said. The crowd erupted in applause.

Professionals in every field revere their superstars, and in medicine the best diagnosticians are held in particularly high esteem. Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal, 39, a self-effacing associate professor clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is considered one of the most skillful clinical diagnosticians in practice.

The case Dr. Dhaliwal was presented, at a medical  conference last year, began with information that could have described hundreds of diseases: the patient had intermittent fevers, joint pain, and weight and appetite loss.

To observe him at work is like watching Steven Spielberg tackle a script or Rory McIlroy a golf course. He was given new information bit by bit — lab, imaging and biopsy results. Over the course of the session, he drew on an encyclopedic familiarity with thousands of syndromes. He deftly dismissed red herrings while picking up on clues that others might ignore, gradually homing in on the accurate diagnosis.

Just how special is Dr. Dhaliwal’s talent? More to the point, what can he do that a computer cannot? Will a computer ever successfully stand in for a skill that is based not simply on a vast fund of knowledge but also on more intangible factors like intuition?

The history of computer-assisted diagnostics is long and rich. In the 1970s, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh developed software to diagnose complex problems in general internal medicine; the project eventually resulted in a commercial program called Quick Medical Reference. Since the 1980s, Massachusetts General Hospital has been developing and refining DXplain, a program that provides a ranked list of clinical diagnoses from a set of symptoms and laboratory data.

And I.B.M., on the heels of its triumph last year with Watson, the Jeopardy-playing computer, is working on Watson for Healthcare.

In some ways, Dr. Dhaliwal’s diagnostic method is similar to that of another I.B.M. project: the Deep Blue chess program, which in 1996 trounced Garry Kasparov, the world’s best player at the time, to claim an unambiguous victory in the computer’s relentless march into the human domain.

Although lacking consciousness and a human’s intuition, Deep Blue had millions of moves memorized and could analyze as many each second. Dr. Dhaliwal does the diagnostic equivalent, though at human speed.

Since medical school, he has been an insatiable reader of case reports in medical journals, and case conferences from other hospitals. At work he occasionally uses a diagnostic checklist program called Isabel, just to make certain he hasn’t forgotten something. But the program has yet to offer a diagnosis that Dr. Dhaliwal missed.

Dr. Dhaliwal regularly receives cases from physicians who are stumped by a set of symptoms. At medical conferences, he is presented with one vexingly difficult case and is given 45 minutes to solve it. It is a medical high-wire act; doctors in the audience squirm as the set of facts gets more obscure and all the diagnoses they were considering are ruled out. After absorbing and processing scores of details, Dr. Dhaliwal must commit to a diagnosis. More often than not, he is right.

When working on a difficult case in front of an audience, Dr. Dhaliwal puts his entire thought process on display, with the goal of “elevating the stature of thinking,” he said. He believes this is becoming more important because physicians are being assessed on whether they gave the right medicine to a patient, or remembered to order a certain test.

Without such emphasis, physicians and training programs might forget the importance of having smart, thoughtful doctors. “Because in medicine,” Dr. Dhaliwal said, “thinking is our most important procedure.”

He added: “Getting better at diagnosis isn’t about figuring out if someone has one rare disease versus another. Getting better at diagnosis is as important to patient quality and safety as reducing medication errors, or eliminating wrong site surgery.”

Clinical Precision

Dr. Dhaliwal does half his clinical work on the wards of the San Francisco V. A. Medical Center, and the other half in its emergency department, where he often puzzles through multiple mysteries at a time.

One recent afternoon in the E.R., he was treating a 66-year-old man who was mentally unstable and uncooperative. He complained of hip pain, but routine lab work revealed that his kidneys weren’t working and his potassium was rising to a dangerous level, putting him in danger of an arrhythmia that could kill him — perhaps within hours. An ultrasound showed that his bladder was blocked.

There was work to be done: drain the bladder, correct the potassium level. It would have been easy to dismiss the hip pain as a distraction; it didn’t easily fit the picture. But Dr. Dhaliwal’s instinct is to hew to the ancient rule that physicians should try to come to a unifying diagnosis. In the end, everything — including the hip pain — was traced to metastatic prostate cancer.

“Things can shift very quickly in the emergency room,” Dr. Dhaliwal said. “One challenge of this, whether you use a computer or your brain, is deciding what’s signal and what’s noise.” Much of the time, it is his intuition that helps figure out which is which.

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Better Economy and Storm Delays Lift U.S. Auto Sales

DETROIT (AP) — Superstorm Sandy gave an extra boost to already strong U.S. auto sales last month, although carmakers warned that uncertainty over the "fiscal cliff" could undo some of those gains.

Most major companies, from Toyota to Chrysler, posted impressive increases from a year earlier. Only General Motors was left struggling to explain its 3-percent sales gain and large inventory of unsold trucks.

Americans were already willing to buy a new car or truck last month because they're more confident in the economy. Home values are rising, hiring is up and auto financing is readily available. Also, the average age of a vehicle on U.S. roads is approaching a record 11 years, so many people are looking to replace older cars.

Sandy just boosted that demand. The storm added 20,000 to 30,000 sales industry wide in November, mostly from people who planned to buy cars during the October storm but had to delay their purchases, Ford estimated. People who need to replace storm-damaged vehicles are expected to drive sales for several more months. GM estimates that 50,000 to 100,000 vehicles will eventually need to be replaced.

November sales, when calculated on an annual basis, are likely to be 15 million or more, the highest rate since March of 2008, according to LMC Automotive, a Detroit-area consulting firm. That's higher than the 14.3 million annual rate so far this year, even though November is normally a lackluster month due to cold weather and holiday anticipation. Both GM and Chrysler predicted November sales would run at an annual rate of 15.3 million.

If sales end up at 15 million for the year, it would be a vast improvement over the 10.4 million during the recession in 2009. Sales would still fall short of the recent peak of around 17 million in 2005.

But the ongoing "fiscal cliff" negotiations between Congress and the White House could still derail the industry's recovery. The term refers to sharp government spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to start Jan. 1 unless an agreement is reached to cut the budget deficit. Economists say that those measures, if implemented, could push the U.S. economy back into a recession.

"Exactly how much growth we can expect next year will depend in part on how Congress and the president resolve the fiscal cliff issue," said Kurt McNeil, GM's U.S. sales chief. "Markets and consumers hate uncertainty."

McNeil and other GM executives tried to explain the automaker's disappointing performance. GM's biggest brand, Chevrolet, reported flat sales over last year despite new products like the Spark minicar. Silverado pickup sales fell 10 percent.

GM's sales have been trailing the industry all year. They were up 4 percent through October, compared to the industry-wide increase of 14 percent.

GM said its competitors resorted to higher than usual incentives last month to get rid of 2012 model-year trucks. GM, which had more 2013 trucks on its lots, was only offering an average of $500 per truck, or a third of what others were offering. GM has been trying to hold the line on costly incentives, which can hurt resale value and brand image.

"We want to be known for great products, not great incentives," McNeil said.

But some analysts think GM will be forced to offer more deals in December to clear out higher-than-forecast inventory.

Asian brands also got a boost from some unusually big discounts, said Jesse Toprak, senior analyst for automotive pricing site TrueCar.com. TrueCar estimated that Hyundai and Kia, which were admonished by the U.S. government in late October for overstating gas mileage, increased incentive spending by nearly 30 percent. Nissan spending was up 45 percent to $4,273 per vehicle, by far the highest incentives in the industry.

Toyota said its 17-percent sales increase was partly due to post-Sandy demand. Honda was up 39 percent thanks to strong sales of the new Accord sedan and clearance deals on the outgoing Civic, which was replaced by a new 2013 Civic at the end of the month.

Luxury cars saw their usual yearend surge as holiday commercials started crowding the airwaves. Porsche's sales rose 71 percent to 3,865, a record month for the automaker. Infiniti, Acura, BMW and Lexus all reported big gains.

Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell said luxury brands have historically targeted their customers at this time of year because of holiday bonuses. That's no longer a driving factor, she said, but it's still a good time of year for people to buy 2012 model-year luxury vehicles because dealers are trying to clear them out.

Other automakers reporting sales Monday:

— Chrysler's sales were up 14 percent. Ram pickups were up 23 percent, while sales of the Fiat 500 minicar more than doubled.

— Hyundai's sales rose 8 percent, led by the Sonata midsize car and the Elantra compact. TrueCar said Hyundai increased incentives by 30 percent it was admonished by the U.S. government in late October for overstating gas mileage.

— Volkswagen's sales rose 29 percent on the strength of the Passat sedan, which was up 75 percent.

— Nissan's sales climbed 13 percent as sales of its new Pathfinder SUV more than tripled over last year.

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Egypt's top court postpones ruling amid pressure

CAIRO -- Egypt's highest court postponed ruling on a case against the constitutional assembly after Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi blocked judges Sunday from entering their chambers in an escalating struggle over the nation’s political charter.

Protesters rallied in front of the Supreme Constitutional Court, which was expected to rule on the legitimacy of the constitutional assembly in defiance of Morsi’s decree that the assembly was not subject to judicial oversight. The case has heightened the political divisions and created a backlash against judges connected to the deposed regime of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The judges announced the "suspension of court sessions until the time when they can continue their message and rulings without any psychological and material pressures," according to a statement released by the court.

TIMELINE: Revolution in Egypt

The protest against the court was the latest skirmish in a separation-of-powers battle over the nation's constitution. The assembly approved a rushed draft constitution on Friday to preempt a court decision that was expected to rule against the body. Morsi ordered that the proposed constitution be voted on in a national referendum on Dec. 15, essentially sidelining the court.

Opposition movements across the country have been protesting Morsi's power grab for more than a week, reviving the revolutionary fervor that brought down Mubarak in February 2011. The opposition says Morsi, who was elected in June, has made a sham of democracy and that the constitution raises the prospect that Islamic law could jeopardize civil rights.

Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood have stressed that the president'’s expanded powers were necessary to blunt attempts by Mubarak-era courts from derailing Egypt’s political transition. If the constitution is passed, a new parliament -- the court dissolved an earlier Islamist-led legislature in April -- will be voted in early next year.

The Ahram Online news website reported that the constitutional court blamed Morsi and Islamists for the "lies" in a smear campaign to "taint the court’s image." The court added that it was operating in a "climate filled with hatred."

PHOTOS: Pro-Morsi protests in Cairo

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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

 

 

 

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 2

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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“Twilight” shines in third box office win over Bond

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The “Twilight” teen movie vampires sucked more money out of theaters over the weekend, leading James Bond, Brad Pitt and the rest of box office pack with $ 17.4 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales and scoring its third weekly win.

Pitt’s new movie, the small-budget gangster film “Killing Them Softly,” bombed with filmgoers who panned it with a rare “F” grade on average in polling by audience survey firm CinemaScore. The movie landed in seventh place with $ 7 million in ticket sales at domestic theaters.

The results were much brighter for “Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” the fifth and final film in the “Twilight” vampire and werewolf saga, which has earned $ 254.6 million at North American (U.S. and Canadian) theaters since its smash debut on November 16.

The top rankings were similar to last week’s Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Bond movie “Skyfall” starring Daniel Craig as superspy 007 grabbed $ 17 million and held on to second place, according to studio estimates compiled by Reuters. Steven Spielberg‘s historical drama “Lincoln,” featuring a critically acclaimed performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th U.S. president, kept the No. 3 slot with $ 13.5 million.

A week ago, “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ and “Skyfall” helped push the five-day Thanksgiving weekend to a box office record. The success of the two films, plus upcoming releases such as fantasy prequel “The Hobbit” and musical “Les Miserables,” are likely to power 2012 ticket sales to an all-time high, according to industry forecasts.

As of Sunday, year-to-date sales were running 5.9 percent ahead of the same point in 2011 at $ 9.9 billion, box office tracker Hollywood.com said.

Critics were kinder than audiences to Pitt’s “Killing Them Softly.” Seventy-nine percent of reviews collected on the Rotten Tomatoes website applauded the film, which blends a violent but comic gangster story with criticism of politicians’ failure to address the economic crisis.

In the movie, Pitt plays a hitman brought in by mafia bosses to eliminate a group of thieves who raid a high-stakes poker game. The film is set in an unspecified U.S. city marked by abandoned houses, closed shops and petty criminals and mobsters trying to get by.

The Weinstein Company distributed the movie, which was produced for less than $ 20 million by Annapurna Pictures, Inferno Entertainment, and Pitt’s production company, Plan B Entertainment.

In the No. 4 slot, family movie “Rise of the Guardians” captured $ 13.5 million. The Dreamworks Animation film has taken in $ 48.9 million since its Thanksgiving weekend debut, one of the slowest starts for a movie from the studio behind “Shrek” and “Kung Fu Panda.”

“Guardians” features the voices of Chris Pine and Alec Baldwin as the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and other childhood favorites who save the world.

Rounding out the top five, survival story “Life of Pi” earned $ 12 million and fifth place. The critically praised film from director Ang Lee is based on a book about a boy stranded on a boat with an adult Bengal tiger. Its two-week domestic total reached $ 48.4 million.

The other nationwide release, horror thriller “The Collection,” took in $ 3.4 million and finished in tenth place. The movie, a sequel to 2009 movie “The Collector,” tells the story of a serial killer who kidnaps women.

“Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ was released by Summit Entertainment, a unit of Lions Gate Entertainment. Sony Corp’s movie studio distributed “Skyfall.”

“Lincoln” was produced by Dreamworks and distributed by Walt Disney Co. Viacom Inc’s Paramount studio distributed “Rise of the Guardians.” News Corp’s 20th Century Fox studio released “Life of Pi,” and LD Entertainment distributed “The Collection.”

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine and Christine Kearney; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Opinion: A Health Insurance Detective Story

I’VE had a long career as a business journalist, beginning at Forbes and including eight years as the editor of Money, a personal finance magazine. But I’ve never faced a more confounding reporting challenge than the one I’m engaged in now: What will I pay next year for the pill that controls my blood cancer?

After making more than 70 phone calls to 16 organizations over the past few weeks, I’m still not totally sure what I will owe for my Revlimid, a derivative of thalidomide that is keeping my multiple myeloma in check. The drug is extremely expensive — about $11,000 retail for a four-week supply, $132,000 a year, $524 a pill. Time Warner, my former employer, has covered me for years under its Supplementary Medicare Program, a plan for retirees that included a special Writers Guild benefit capping my out-of-pocket prescription costs at $1,000 a year. That out-of-pocket limit is scheduled to expire on Jan. 1. So what will my Revlimid cost me next year?

The answers I got ranged from $20 a month to $17,000 a year. One of the first people I phoned said that no matter what I heard, I wouldn’t know the cost until I filed a claim in January. Seventy phone calls later, that may still be the most reliable thing anyone has told me.

Like around 47 million other Medicare beneficiaries, I have until this Friday, Dec. 7, when open enrollment ends, to choose my 2013 Medicare coverage, either through traditional Medicare or a private insurer, as well as my drug coverage — or I will risk all sorts of complications and potential late penalties.

But if a seasoned personal-finance journalist can’t get a straight answer to a simple question, what chance do most people have of picking the right health insurance option?

A study published in the journal Health Affairs in October estimated that a mere 5.2 percent of Medicare Part D beneficiaries chose the cheapest coverage that met their needs. All in all, consumers appear to be wasting roughly $11 billion a year on their Part D coverage, partly, I think, because they don’t get reliable answers to straightforward questions.

Here’s a snapshot of my surreal experience:

NOV. 7 A packet from Time Warner informs me that the company’s new 2013 Retiree Health Care Plan has “no out-of-pocket limit on your expenses.” But Erin, the person who answers at the company’s Benefits Service Center, tells me that the new plan will have “no practical effect” on me. What about the $1,000-a-year cap on drug costs? Is that really being eliminated? “Yes,” she says, “there’s no limit on out-of-pocket expenses in 2013.” I tell her I think that could have a major effect on me.

Next I talk to David at CVS/Caremark, Time Warner’s new drug insurance provider. He thinks my out-of-pocket cost for Revlimid next year will be $6,900. He says, “I know I’m scaring you.”

I call back Erin at Time Warner. She mentions something about $10,000 and says she’ll get an estimate for me in two business days.

NOV. 8 I phone Medicare. Jay says that if I switch to Medicare’s Part D prescription coverage, with a new provider, Revlimid’s cost will drive me into Medicare’s “catastrophic coverage.” I’d pay $2,819 the first month, and 5 percent of the cost of the drug thereafter — $563 a month or maybe $561. Anyway, roughly $9,000 for the year. Jay says AARP’s Part D plan may be a good option.

NOV. 9 Erin at Time Warner tells me that the company’s policy bundles United Healthcare medical coverage with CVS/Caremark’s drug coverage. I can’t accept the medical plan and cherry-pick prescription coverage elsewhere. It’s take it or leave it. Then she puts CVS’s Michele on the line to get me a Revlimid quote. Michele says Time Warner hasn’t transferred my insurance information. She can’t give me a quote without it. Erin says she will not call me with an update. I’ll have to call her.

My oncologist’s assistant steers me to Celgene, Revlimid’s manufacturer. Jennifer in “patient support” says premium assistance grants can cut the cost of Revlimid to $20 or $30 a month. She says, “You’re going to be O.K.” If my income is low enough to qualify for assistance.

NOV. 12 I try CVS again. Christine says my insurance records still have not been transferred, but she thinks my Revlimid might cost $17,000 a year.

Adriana at Medicare warns me that AARP and other Part D providers will require “prior authorization” to cover my Revlimid, so it’s probably best to stick with Time Warner no matter what the cost.

But Brooke at AARP insists that I don’t need prior authorization for my Revlimid, and so does her supervisor Brian — until he spots a footnote. Then he assures me that it will be easy to get prior authorization. All I need is a doctor’s note. My out-of-pocket cost for 2013: roughly $7,000.

NOV. 13 Linda at CVS says her company still doesn’t have my file, but from what she can see about Time Warner’s insurance plans my cost will be $60 a month — $720 for the year.

CVS assigns my case to Rebecca. She says she’s “sure all will be fine.” Well, “pretty sure.” She’s excited. She’s been with the company only a few months. This will be her first quote.

NOV. 14 Giddens at Time Warner puts in an “emergency update request” to get my files transferred to CVS.

Frank Lalli is an editorial consultant on retirement issues and a former senior executive editor at Time Warner’s Time Inc.

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